Doughnuts We are tucked under heavy blankets, the odd goose-down feather sticks out tickling a ticklish nose. We all breathe differently. The boy with asthma is a little wheezy. His chest rises, and I hear a struggle. The girl sighs as she exhales, not all the time, but enough to notice. Under these blankets we are a tangle of legs and arms. Some are softer than others. Some legs are furry, others prickly. Small toes with sharp nails that catch soft skin result in wails, whines, whimpers. I run my hand through my daughter’s hair and with a firm voice she tells me to stop because she’s sleeping. I trace the soft features of my son’s face, his eyebrows (mine), his nose (his own). He nuzzles into my neck and says will you make us doughnuts today? We were good last night. A man-size arm drapes over the three of us. As they drift back to sleep, I pull away, slinking out the side of the bed, and walk upstairs to the kitchen, leg-stiff and back-sore, ankles cracking, wondering if we have enough eggs. Four hundred grams of flour mixes with a teaspoon of baking powder in my metal bowl. I add sixty grams of white sugar while a cup of milk warms itself on the element of my stove top with half a vanilla bean bobbing on the ripples. I put seven grams of dried yeast in the milk and whisk. Once the mixer starts, the kids wake up for real. I hear a tumble of feet up the stairs and bodies flying at couches. It’s time for cartoons. I’ve cracked two eggs into the milk, removed the husk of vanilla bean and poured it into the bowl. As my mixer thrashes about the counter, I make coffee. I watch the chaffinches outside the window and lose myself in the music of the mixer pounding away on the metal bench, kneading. Butter. One hundred grams and then we rest, me and my dough, for an hour. It stays in the bowl covered with a checked tea towel. I sit with the kids, one on my lap, the other one next to me. I rise to find my dough risen too, so I scoop it out of the bowl and place it on the wooden bench where I knead it with my hands a little, to work the gluten. I punch holes in the tender dough with the doughnut cutter from Japan City. I leave them to rise again on the metal trays. The deep fryer is plugged in, the scent of hot oil and yeast fills the kitchen. I lift each ball carefully (they are so delicate) and submerge them in the oil one by one with my fingers. Flicked mid-way through cooking time to cook both sides evenly, they come out like little golden pillows. The best part is the cinnamon sugar that then trails its way through the house, onto couches and beds, sticking to fingers and hair. The crystals dissolve into sickly-sweet on our tongues as we eat the doughnuts with hot coffee and hot chocolate, steaming in mugs. I go back to the window in the kitchen but the birds are gone. The kids giggle in the living room and I think back and remember the cold, hard cereal of my childhood, the lonely breakfasts spent in front of the TV and even though I shouldn’t, I eat another one. And then a few more, until I feel so sick that I think about throwing it all up, two fingers down the back of the throat, a stomach contraction and a heave.
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